Samain Thanksgiving Moon
We have experienced something dark, disturbing and powerful, an election in which the id drove our common choice. Kate said, “Hate has won.” Yes. But not only hate. Fear. And, even worse, hate dominated by fear.
The most prescient article I read, and I read hundreds, cautioned American liberals and leftists not to take the polls too seriously. I tried to find the article, but couldn’t. It was written by a Brit, an opponent of the Brexit decision and a man who awoke to a decision by his countryfolk that defied polls and pundits. He reminded us of the European turn toward nativism, French, Austrian and German movements in particular. And, he said, it could easily happen in the U.S. It has.
As I wrote earlier, I’m not a man given to despair and I don’t feel it this morning, this terrible wakin’ up mornin’ when the American dream has ghosts and rapists and Confederate flag waving, gun toting white men ranging uninhibited in it. This election is, I believe, a result of that dream dissipating like puffy cumulus clouds pounded by hurricane force winds. A dream denied, hopes crushed. What happens to the heart when the future dims?
Of course, you can ask any woman, any African-American or Latino, any member of the LGBT community. Ask any of the native Americans on the ground in North Dakota today. Ask any group that has existed on the fringe of the American experiment. They know what happens to the heart when the future dims.
Today that same disillusion among white working class men and women has pounded on the door of our destiny. Yes, the irony is thick, but the political dilemma of persons shunted to the side of history contains the seeds of revolution.
In part I do not despair because I have read history. The United States is not the first great power to be brought low by economic dislocation of a former privileged class. Paul Kennedy’s, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, proposed a mechanism for great power collapse. Military overreach strains domestic budgets and can create misallocation of economic resources. The resulting economic woes, Kennedy suggested, create the conditions for dissent at home, dissent that can wreck political unity.
It remains to be seen whether the toxic stew cooked up by the Donald’s political base will poison our common life and prove fatal to this long experiment in democracy. I doubt that it will. I believe we are, still, stronger than the darker angels of our nature.
Lincoln, that stalwart of the old GOP, said it best:
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Well. The countdown clock is at 0 days and 18 hours as I write this. No more nattering, punditing, analyzing, fearing or hoping. Now it’s time for the votes. For the breathless ring of “We’re calling this state for…” An article posted on Real Clear Politics has it exactly right: “Half of America is about to get gut punched.” If you want to see how the stakes look from the red side, read this short screed from Nevada: 
Read a short line somewhere that said re-examination precedes renewal. My hope is that this election is a re-examination of the American political contract, of what it means to be a nation. I’m far away from my anarchist days when I wished for the Balkanization of the states, the U.S. divided into regional countries. We need each other, red and blue, white and black, brown and yellow. We need each other because ours is a country built on an idea, not a people. We become a people only when that idea ties us together.
Love of America comes from all of us boat people, all those whose ancestors sailed here from Europe, even those brought here against their will, all those who walked across the border in search of a better life, all those who flew here from parts of the world in crisis or in economic disarray. That’s all of us with one notable exception: the native americans.
I imagine, all round the U.S., on all political sides, a fervent Thanksgiving prayer will be, “Thank God, it’s over.” Of course, the finish of this demeaning, dispiriting and dismal campaign will not heal the divisions it has unveiled. Welcome to the new America where less-educated white men and women are newly visible as an underprivileged and problematic slice of the citizenry.
He sits, early in the morning, while it is still dark outside, with his head in his hands. Orion, his longtime friend hangs in the sky visible to the southwest, Scorpio and Cassiopeia and the Drinking Gourd out there, too. A crescent Thanksgiving Moon, waxing toward its Super Moon event on November 25th, was visible last night.
In this case Trumpism is the monster, a living candidacy patched together from a body of populist resentment, the brain of a nativist bigot, the nervous system of fearful white males and the legs of second-amendment worshipping other-phobic citizens. The arms, though, the arms are Trump’s, dangling like the tentacles of a squid, ready to grab, squeeze, embrace. Force. Trump is Frankenstein to this political moment in the Republican Party. The GOP provided the lightning that brought this monster to life and has paraded it with pride through this mockery of a campaign.
Race relations are in a visibly violent phase. Police kill black folks with so steady a drumbeat that it has become like Trump’s long string of insults to America, dulling our capacity for outrage. Misogyny is at its peak in the Donald, powerful at the same time as our first serious female candidate.
At 12:30 we drove over to Evergreen for mussar at Beth Evergreen. It was Rabbi Jamie’s birthday and each woman brought a cooked or purchased offering of some kind. We had cranberry juice with tea and mint, apple juice, brie and a wonderful soft cheese, warm carrots, pistachios, cashews, strawberries, grapes, melon, crackers, chips, guacamole, a birthday cake, sea-salt caramel and chocolate brownies (Kate, see pic), with Halloween plates and napkins.
If the Donald wins, I’m not leaving for Canada. That would just leave the country to him and his kind. Not acceptable. But I will build a transparent dome around our house. The dome will have a semi-permeable membrane for its skin. Only healthy, clean, non-stupid ideas will be able to come onto our property whether delivered by newspaper, internet, or television. I haven’t figured out what to do when we leave our dome home, a work in progress.
Since 9/11 our politics have become polarized, mean, unbending. The Donald has only ridden that cresting wave; he did not create it. Like any demagogue he has an instinctive feel for the anguish of ordinary citizens and an ability to say things that seem to give it voice. As a representative democracy, we rely on politicians for taking the pulse of their constituents. Yes, that’s true.
